LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 





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THE NATIONAL TRAGEDY. 




• FOUR SERMONS 

DELIVERED BEFORE THE 

FIRST CONGREGATIONAL SOCIETY, NEW BEDFORD, 

Jjjd± 

ON THE LIFE AND DEATH 

OF ^ 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



BY WILLIAM J. POTTER. 




Nefo JSefcforto, iflass. : 

ABRAHAM TABER & BROTHER, 
1865. 




-LOo, 




THE NATIONAL TRAGEDY: 



FOUR SERMONS 



DELIVERED HEFORE THE 

FIRST CONGREGATIONAL SOCIETY, NEW BEDFORD, 



ON THE LIFE AND DEATH 




/ 



OF 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



BY WILLIAM J. POTTER. 



Ncfo BetJforU, fflass.: 
ABRAHAM TABER & BROTHER. 









FEINTED BY REQUEST. 



NEW BEDFORD : 
E. Anthony & Sons, Printers. 



I. 



THE ASSASSINATION OF THE PKESIDENT. 



Wo looked for peace, but no good came ; and for a time of health, and behold, trouble ! 
Jer. viii. 15. 

Their sword shall enter into their own heart. Ps. xxxvii. 15. 

My Friends, how can I fitly speak to you to-day ? How 
can any human words lift the burden from our hearts ? 
How can any human wisdom fathom the Providence of 
this national tragedy under whose awful shadow we come 
together ? Our staggered faith asks, indeed, if there be 
any Providence in this foul deed ; and reason and reverence 
and piety, all that is most cogent in truth and all that is 
most holy in religion, cry out, — No ! there is no Providence 
in it ! No Providence save that which belongs to the 
blackest crime, — no Providence save that which permits 
the foulest cruelty to wreak its demoniac spirit on unoffend- 
ing innocence, and does not, by miraculous interposition, 
stay the stealthy assassin's blow, — no Providence save that 
which always surrounds the dreadful fact of sin, and by 
which sin is made, in its last desperate madness, to 
overleap all bounds, even of its own appointing, and to 
bring down upon itself, in its own destruction, all the 



righteous indignation and vengeance of Heaven's justice ! 
It were blasphemy to speak of any other Providence than 
this in the dark, midnight crime that has slain our President. 
It is the hand of Satanic wickedness that has done this 
thing ; and the hand of the Lord is not in it, save as it 
enters into every crime, to neutralize, overturn, and destroy 
it, result and cause together. 

I pray not — I dare not pray — for meek submission, 
as if this were God's act. I pray rather for a just 
indignation, for a wise and righteous wrath to inspire us, — 
not for any littleness of vindictive passion, not for any 
spirit of human vengeance, — but with reverent earnestness 
and solemn sense of the hour's need, I pray that the mighty 
spirit of Heaven's retributive justice may possess and stir 
our hearts, and put into us the iron nerve that is wanted for 
the stern tasks now given to our hands. I pray, indeed, 
that thy will, Lord, not ours, may be done, — but it is not 
thy will to slay the beauty of Israel on our high places, — it 
is the unsanctified, maddened, wicked will of man that has 
done this deed, thinking, in its insensate frenzy, to fight 
against and overthrow thy will. Yea, Lord, thy will be 
done ! Thus may we ever pray. And may we listen 
reverently, docilely, courageously, to hear thy will even in 
this fearful tragedy, with hearts and hands ready to do to 
the utmost whatsoever duty is required of us. For, though 
not by thy righteous will has this dreadful thing been done, 
yet in it thou sendest us warning, and instruction, and great 
commands. Let us listen and obey. 

Listen for yourselves, friends. I cannot hope, and I 
have not the heart to attempt to-day, to interpret this 



national calamity, and this crime against the nation, in their 
full significance. Our sense of loss is too personal, — it will 
not let us yet fully uncover the sacred reserve of our grief; 
it is yet too soon — we cannot bear — to have the curtain 
lifted wholly, and the fearful horror exposed in all its secret 
causes and consequences. But listen — listen each for him- 
self — to what truth and justice and a wise, true love, are 
trying, through the passages of this grief, to utter to-day in 
every loyal heart. Listen, my friends, for God's voice, as 
he shall utter in your stirred and agonized souls the moral 
of this awful tragedy. Listen and obey. 

The lesson must come. But I can only hint at it to-day. 
It is not yet the hour for analysis, but for grief. 

For grief! Oh, double grief, that in the hour of our 
triumph this wickedness has been consummated ! that into 
the hour of our rejoicing this heavy sadness falls ! that the 
bells had hardly rung out their gladness through the land 
before they had to mournfully toll the people's sorrow ! 
Double grief, that he who had led us so wisely, and with so 
much honor to himself and the country, through the terrors 
of war, has fallen by the assassin's hand, just as he was 
going through the gates of victory to receive the crown of 
peace and of a nation's gratitude ! The crown of peace ! 
He wears it now from God's own hands. The crown of a 
nation's gratitude ! He is henceforth our martyr and our 
saint. 

Grief not for him ! But grief that our hands cannot 
bestow the crown which his have so nobly won, and that 
our eyes cannot see him wear it, moving with honors and 
grateful love among us down to serene old age. Double 



grief, that just as peace was dawning, and the whole east 
was radiant with the coming sun of prosperity and joy, the 
sky is suddenly darkened with the blackness of this guilt 
and this tempest of a nation's tears ! 

I thought to speak to you to-day, my friends, of the 
glory of Petersburg and Eichmond; of the overthrow and 
surrender of the great army of the rebellion, and of the old 
flag raised again by brave Anderson's hands over Fort 
Sumter, — of the open door and auspicious harbingers of 
peace. But "we looked for peace, and behold trouble." 
We looked for peace, and behold a sword. 

Four years ago this crime would not have shocked us as 
it does now. Then we almost expected it, and it was 
almost a miracle that it did not come. But now, after 
being saved through the hazards of four years of open war 
and stealthy treachery, that this precious blood should 
be spilled, by the dastardly assassin's hand, on the very 
threshold of final victory, — it is for this that our hearts 
weep and almost refuse to be comforted, and our shocked, 
staggering faith asks, "Why, why, was this consecration, 
and this baptism needed, before we could enter again the 
holy temple of peace ? " 

We weep not for him. His career is finished gloriously. 
Few public men in this, or any, land will have so honorable 
a record in history. The people's president — not the 
president of politicians, or of a party, but the president of 
the people and the country, — coming from the people, 
respected, honored, trusted, beloved, chosen and re-chosen 
by the people, he aimed always with upright and manly 
purpose to serve the people, and advance their interests and 



their rights. The most magnanimous and tender-hearted 
and forgiving of magistrates, he has almost fallen a victim to 
his own generous nature. Standing in presence of the open 
grave which violence has prepared for him, we forget even 
the few faults of his character. His life rounds before us 
in majestic fulness and completion; and whether for the 
sober pen of the future historian, or for the dramatic demands 
of some coming Shakspeare, he could hardly have himself 
asked for a longer continuance of life. For him, — for his 
fame, for a sure place in his country's gratitude, for his im- 
mortality in history or in dramatic story, his life is finished 
with rare and aesthetic felicity. It received its crown when, 
a few days ago, he made that modest but triumphant entry 
into Richmond, hailed, not by the rich and the powerful, but by 
the poor blacks, whose chains by his command had just fallen 
from their limbs, and who crowded the way and followed 
him through the streets, showering their blessings upon him 
as their deliverer and saviour. That was the crown of his 
presidency and his life. After that there was no honor 
which the country or the world could give him. We weep 
not, then, for him. He is henceforth our hero as well as our 
martyr-president. 

Nor do we mourn for our country's cause, as if that were 
lost. In thus completing and crowning his own life, he had 
conducted the nation to the point of assured triumph and 
safety. Not for our country's cause can we now grieve or 
fear. That, thanks to our dead president, thanks to our 
generals and their armies, thanks to the Lord of Hosts, is 
now beyond the power of any one man's life or death either 
to save or to destroy. 



8 



Not for our country's cause do we mourn ; but we do weep 
for our country's loss and dishonor. We weep for the 
State, bereaved of an honest, faithful, unselfish ruler. We 
weep for philanthropy, bereaved of a sagacious counsellor 
and helper. We weep for humanity, bereaved of the 
tenderest and most compassionate of hearts. We weep for 
the whole world of mankind, bereaved of a statesman who 
had faith, without regard to race, or color, or country, in the 
laws of divine justice, and in a government of equal rights 
and equal chances for all. But most of all do we weep for 
the enormity of this crime, — that the assassin, at home 
under despotism, but a stranger to our free government, 
has been permitted to put his brand of infamy upon the 
Republic, and to stain forever its hitherto fair escutcheon 
with more precious than imperial blood. Flow, tears of 
this people, till you wash out in expiation the "damned 
spot" of this guilt ! Drop your tears in floods, clouds, to 
cover our shame ! Let the sun and the moon and the pure 
heavens be darkened, that they see not our sin ! Oh, 
humanity, that thou couldst have borne this dreadful crime in 
thy bosom ! In all the world there is but one that equals it. 
We must go back eighteen hundred years, to Gethsemane 
and Mount Calvary, to find its fitting mate in atrocity. 

Yet not upon the skirts of the Republic, not upon the 
sceptre or royal robes of freedom, rests this stain. It is 
the exotic spirit of despotism that has committed this 
horror. Slavery has done this deed. Slavery, which has 
educated a whole community in barbarism, which has 
corrupted all sense of honor and right and truth in its 
upholders, which gave birth to the monstrous theory of 



secession, and fomented treason and conspiracy and this 
wicked rebellion, — slavery, which has scattered families, 
and desolated homes, and starved prisoners, and shot down 
men and women in cold blood, — slavery, which has eaten up 
the wealth of the country, and murdered your sons, or sent 
them to you as living skeletons, — slavery, this fiend, has 
now slain your president. Slavery is the assassin. It 
is the same spirit that has ruled the rebellion from the 
beginning. It began with the hanging of John Brown, and 
it has gone on demanding ever fresh and greater horrors to 
feed upon, until it ends with the murder of Abraham Lincoln. 
The awful laws of dramatic unity, stricter in the actual 
than in any fictitious tragedy, could not spare it this result, 
even though itself may have begun to shrink from the horror 
of it. It could not be permitted that this war, originated 
and fed by such a spirit, could end, and leave even a tradition 
of chivalry or honor or heroism on the side of slavery. 
All Southern valor and skill and self-sacrifice and devotion, 
which might otherwise have challenged and won the admira- 
tion of the world and posterity, are now swept from human 
memory by the infamy of this transcendent crime. Hence- 
forth, through all history, the rebellion is branded as assassin. 
And slavery, which instigated and sustained the rebellion, 
has, by the law of its own necessities, brought it helplessly 
bound to this infamous end ; and so it is forever proclaimed 
before all the world how purely evil and inhuman and dia- 
bolical a thing slavery is. It is the divine law by which evil 
works its own destruction, and, in attempting to undermine 
the good, digs its own grave. "Their sword shall enter 
into their own heart." 

B 



10 



And is not this, my friends, a hint of the moral of this 
tragedy ? Whether we needed the lesson or not, is it not 
clear to us now, that we cannot safely leave in the soil, 
anywhere in all the land, the smallest seed or root or filament 
or atom of that wrong against God and man out of which 
all this crime and curse of treason and war and assassination 
have grown? This may have been the last, desperate 
struggle of the monstrous wrong in its mortal agony, but it 
shows us that, until dead and utterly exterminated, it carries 
with it satanic stealth and violence and murder. And 
secondly, is it not plainly taught us that, if we cannot trust 
the spirit of this evil so long as the evil is anywhere above 
the ground, so we cannot safely trust, in any efforts at 
reconstructing the Republic, the men who have been con- 
spirators for the defence and extension of this evil, — that 
we cannot trust them in any offices of the nation or the 
states ? They must be outlawed. They challenged and 
defied the federal government, they threw down the gauntlet 
against justice and for slavery : they have failed, and now 
let them abide the issue. Let justice be done : pardon and 
freedom and suffrage for the mass of the people, for white 
and for black j the penalty of treason or the outlaw's fate 
for the leaders. Not alone justice, but gratitude and honor 
and a true magnanimity and mercy demand, that, in our 
reconstructed Union, we shall not hold off at arm's length 
those who have been our firmest and most faithful friends in 
the South, and refuse to them the equal rights of the 
government which they have helped to maintain, while we 
take to our compassionate bosoms the men who, so long as 
they were able, stood against us as our enemies, and who 



11 



even now may stab us as we lean confidingly upon them. 
There is room for honorable magnanimity and for christian 
mercy, without risking the very cause for which our armies 
have fought and our victories been gained. We want no 
unholy passion, no vindictive wrath ; let the majesty of law 
be maintained; let there be no belittling of the great 
occasion by any assumption of the powers of retribution by 
private hands ; but there are eternal laws of divine justice 
to be nationally vindicated for white and for black; and 
when we talk of magnanimity, we must not forget the race 
that has been waiting in patient suffering these many years 
for the magnanimity of this nation, and by whose help wo 
have been lifted to a position where we have now the power 
to be magnanimous. 

Is it possible, my friends, that we needed this awful 
calamity to teach us this lesson ? to urge us to some duty 
that we were shrinking from ? to push us to the full com- 
pletion of this dire work of war by the establishment of 
absolute and impartial justice? Is it possible — is it not 
possible — that even now we could not build a true and 
lasting Union without this sacrifice, the greatest and highest 
that we could make ? that, even with these gates of victory 
open, we could not enter the temple of perfect peace, unless 
the blood of our president should sprinkle the threshold 
and consecrate the altar ? Let each ask and answer for 
himself; and answering, heed the promptings of solemn duty. 
Christianity was only a partial reform of Judaism until its 
leader was put to death by the hands of wicked men on 
Mount Calvary. Then it was transfigured, and became a new 
religion. Jesus lived a holy and wonderful life, but not till 



12 



he was led to the cross did the hour come in which he was 
to be glorified. And this, friends, may be the hour in 
which this nation is to be glorified. It may be, and God 
grant it, that half-measures of justice will now be swallowed 
up in absolute and complete equity ; that partial reform will 
give way to thorough regeneration; and that the nation 
henceforth will be no more the same, but transfigured and 
impelled by a new spirit. Through our great leader, we 
are crucified. God grant that we may also be glorified, even 
as he is glorified ! Of all the days in the year, the assassins 
chose Good Friday to strike their fatal blow, — the day that 
their brother assassins, eighteen hundred years ago, put to 
death the Redeemer in Judea. Auspicious omen ! The 
tomb shall not hold him. The stone shall be rolled away 
from this sepulchre also. And he shall appear among us 
again in another form, pleading for truth and justice and 
humanity, so that our hearts shall burn within us by tho 
way ; and in closet and council he shall still come to us, and 
speak " Peace " to our troubled souls. One duty also, 
chiefest of all, will he enjoin : " Lovest thou me ? Feed 
my lambs; feed my sheep, — the weak and little ones, the 
poor, neglected, oppressed, whose bonds I loosed." 

Friends, this is Easter Sunday. Already it is time we 
were at the door of the sepulchre to await his coming, to 
listen for his higher bidding. Let the night of darkness 



and distraction and fear vanish. Lift up your eyes ; behold 
ic glories of 

April 1G, 1865. 



the glories of the resurrection morning. 



II. 



DISCOURSE ON THE DAY OF THE FUNERAL RITES. 



My friends, this is not the hour for long or elaborate 
speech. We have come together by a natural and sponta- 
neous impulse, that we may join, even at this distant point, 
in the funeral solemnities of our late honored President. 
Our hearts are too bitterly shocked and grieved, our souls 
too full of sadness, for many words : a sadness, not only for 
the great loss that our nation, and the world even, have 
sustained, but a still deeper sadness because of the infamous 
crime and lasting shame to our country through which this 
sudden loss has come ; for not in the ordinary course of 
nature and Providence does the nation suffer this bereave- 
ment, but through the agency of a deed of the most atrocious 
wickedness. Providence permitted it, — but only as it 
permits, only as it does not interfere with, the freedom of 
the human will, even though, swayed by satanic purposes, 
that will should lie in wait for innocent blood, or lay its 
murderous hand upon the Lord's anointed. Providence 
permitted it: and the infinite Providence will neutralize 
and transform it, as it does all evil, into final good and 
blessing, — we cannot doubt that : and yet divine Providence, 
for the very reason that it is infinitely good and holy, must 



14 



shrink in utter aversion and horror from the sight of such a 
crime. The whole race of humanity is stained by it, and 
the very heavens are blackened, and weep for shame. 

But I would not use this hour to utter even the just 
indignation and anguish of horror that fill us at the cause 
of this national calamity and grief. Justice to society, the 
honor and progress of humanity, may in such a case demand 
that there be no act of human pardon; but with God — with 
God — while He looks down with a keenness of paternal 
sorrow, that we can have no conception of, upon the crime, — 
with God, there' is yet always some way of forgiveness for 
the criminal, — because, what is not always the case with 
man, there is with Him always some way, at some time, in 
some world, for bringing even the greatest criminal back, 
through the path of repentance, to newness and purity of 
life. With Him also, with God, is almighty power in 
some way to overrule all evil, even the blackest and most 
grievous, to draw from it its poisonous and agonizing sting, 
and to transmute it by degrees into the pure gold of truth 
and integrity and holiness. None but the Infinite One has 
this power : and so to Him we turn in this hour, seeking 
through this thought, on the wings of this faith, to 
mount up, up, above all this earthly darkness and woe 
and sin and despairing grief— up to the unshaken, eternal, 
unchangeable wisdom and might of the Infinite, — up to such 
point of spiritual elevation that we can see how, amidst all 
the conflicts, and perplexities, and complexities, and evils, and 
crimes, and sorrows of our finite lives, an overruling, uni- 
versal Law, holding them all firmly in its grasp, works out 
unswervingly its wise designs ; and how, over all special 



15 



wills and deeds, with their warrings and weaknesses and 
aberrations, there is one general will and providence, aim- 
ing always at the utmost possible good, and never moved 
from its path, never thwarted for a moment, by what passes 
on this little planet, among our little race. 

Yes, my friends, in this hour of all hours do we need faith 
in God, — in a God who is a present Providence and Ruler 
in the earth, and whose designs cannot be circumvented by 
any wandering will, or disobedience, or even heaven-defying 
crime, of man. In God is our trust, our refuge, and our 
hope, — in the eternity of His Laws, in the eternity of His 
Love. Over all the failures and sins and crimes of men, 
the great Law still works on, taking up and solving all 
these lower disturbances in its higher spiritual harmonies. 
Look up, friends, even from out of this depth of national 
humiliation and grief, — look up into the heavens, above the 
earth, above its clouds and ills, and see ever " beauty for 
ashes." See how, in the pure vault above our heads, the 
eternal stars come out, and take our little earth into their 
company, — take it with all its disorders into the harmony 
of the celestial spheres, its very perturbations being provided 
for and cancelled in their grander revolutions. And so we 
may ever read in the wise beneficence of the great provi- 
dential laws, even in the midst of our strifes and wars and 
deeds too black to name, the everlasting gospel of " Peace 
on earth, good will to man." All things are transformed 
for man's eternal welfare, and the evil doers themselves arc 
compelled to nullify their own purposes ; their crimes, how- 
ever black, and though wholly the result of human will and 
human depravity, and never foreordained by God, are yet 



16 



not outside of His eternal laws, and are not unprovided for 
in His benign plan of the universe. No sooner is crime 
committed than it touches some secret spring in these 
infinite, all-embracing laws, which the wicked men who 
plotted it had no thought of, and which sets in motion moral 
forces that are freighted with sure retribution for them and 
sure overthrow of the evil principle and passion out of 
which their wickedness came. Or where we cannot see the 
operation of this benignant law, we can at least bow in 
silent trust, as we do before the infinite Providence to-day, 
with hands upon our lips reverently hushing all questions, all 
doubts, satisfied that the grand centre around which all 
these finite spheres of life revolve is Infinite Love, which is 
therefore amply able to cancel all their errors, to redeem 
all infamies, — satisfied that whatever else may go down, 
the Heart of the universe cannot fail ; — 

" And so, by faith correcting sight, 
We bow before His will, and trust 
Howe'er they seem, He doeth all things right." 

To-day the nation buries its president. And such a 
president ! than whom we have had none better, none more 
honored and beloved since our first. If Washington was 
the father of our country, Lincoln was its savior. And in 
many respects he came nearer to the heart of the people 
than did even Washington. A gentle, kind, lovable man, 
who, in all the bitterness of this civil war, with all its 
political and personal strifes, has never said a harsh thing 
of any of his enemies North or South, and who never did a 
cruel thing in all his life. His faith in human nature and 



17 



in the good intentions of even his worst foes, and his 
tenderness in judging others' conduct and motives, were 
almost pathetic in their simplicity. Perhaps he had not 
severity and roughness enough for the stern work that the 
time demands. And yet, as we look back from his grave 
upon this trait of his character, so christian in its type of 
mercy, so constant always in all his words and deeds, 
so forever characterizing him in all history as our good 
president, we can hardly wish that he had been otherwise. 
His few public faults, which were relative only to the times in 
which he had to act, all lay on the side of great virtues, and 
at any other time would have been great virtues. An honest, 
conscientious, unselfish, philanthropic man was he ; thoroughly 
incorruptible ; devoted with single, uncompromising aim to 
the good of his country and the interests of humanity ; and 
believing most earnestly in the God-given equal rights and 
privileges of all men. Not an enthusiast, but wise ; reticent 
of his opinions and public purposes, yet familiar, and un- 
willingly turning his ear from any comer ; exquisitely modest 
and unassuming, — always Abraham Lincoln still, though 
president, — the man always more than, and above, the 
president ; never in all the events of these years claiming 
anything for himself, but giving the credit ever to others, 
and to events, and to the people, whose servant he always 
called himself, and to God, whose will, without any affectation 
of piety, he meant religiously to follow. Not a rapid man 
in coming to an opinion, but coming surely, he never had to 
take a step backward through having taken a misstep ; he 
never went farther than he saw to be clearly right, but 
always just as far as he saw, and held to his position, until 



18 



new light should lead still farther forward, with a heroic 
persistency; — a man seeking new light, constantly progres- 
sive, and meaning to do his whole duty ; a man of great 
sagacity, and knowledge of men, intuitively quick in perceiv- 
ing the means necessary for any proposed ends, keen in the 
use of arguments, believing in the application of absolute 
principles to politics, and possessing large common sense 
for devising the practical policies necessary for making the 
application; — therefore a true and eminently successful 
statesman. 

And this man, thus gifted, thus devoted, has led the 
country through four years of unexampled civil war and 
peril to the final glory of military triumph, and to the very 
verge of assured peace ; and, crowning honor of all, under 
God he has been the instrument of delivering from bondage 
a whole race among us that former administrations of the 
government for long years had helped to oppress, — a race 
who now gaze wistfully after him as their ascended savior, — 
while the country advances through this door, which his 
hands have opened and no man's now can shut, to a new 
career and to a glorious destiny, — free, united henceforth in 
institutions and spirit as well as in form, and the hospitable 
home and helper of universal humanity. 

Here, my friends, in these capacities and in these oppor- 
tunities and deeds, are the elements of a rare greatness as 
well as goodness ; and history, I believe, will adjudge that 
Abraham Lincoln was not only our good president, but also 
one of our few great presidents. Here are elements of 
deed and character, which, if we will put them together, 
not essentially different from what they were in his life, will 



19 



give us the hero that we have been asking for all through 
these years of war. The true hero is seldom entirely 
recognized when present. But it is of such characters as 
this that a nation's history makes up its most precious 
jewels. 

And this man, thus gifted, thus devoted, thus trusted in, 
and followed, and beloved, the nation buries to day : buries 
him — oh, bitter memory! — from the assassin's fatal hand. 
Henceforth our cause is consecrated by his martyrdom. 
Bury him ? We bury only what was the least and outermost 
part of him. While the stricken people all through the 
land, in city and in country, join in these obsequies over his 
grave, he himself is more vital in the nation than ever 
before. ' Already his spilled blood is coursing with quicker 
pulses in the veins of the country ; and treason, conspiracy, 
and despotism, tremble before this dead president more than 
they did before him living. He reigns to-day in hearts that 
never admitted him before. People, that laughed at him in 
life drop heavy tears on his bier, and wherever there is a 
heart that had a single spark of loyalty left, it is kindled 
into a generous, active patriotism now. Lifted up from the 
earth, he draws all men unto him. Bury him ? We enthrone 
him ! He is henceforth our leader more than when he led 
us in the flesh, — our leader now in the spirit. They have 
crucified him ; the country, humanity, Heaven, glorifies him. 

Farewell, departed form ! and sweetly rest from the tur- 
moil of war beneath the friendly sods of thy prairie home. 
Hail, risen and glorified spirit ! not lost to earth, though 
gained to Heaven. 

April 19, 1865. 



ill. 



TEE CAPACITY AND HISTORICAL POSITION OF 
PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 



The memorial of virtue is immortal : because it is known with God and with men. When 
it is present, men take example at it; and when it Is gone, they desire it : it wcareth a crown, 
and triumpheth forever, having gotten the victory, striving for undeflled rewards. Wis. of 
Sol. iv. 1, 2. 

Again we are summoned together to give utterance in 
some more deliberate manner to our sense of national loss, 
and to express our reverence- for the national leader and 
the man whom we have lost. Six weeks have passed away 
since the bloody crime was committed that brought us the 
bereavement. Yet it needs not that anything of praise or 
affection that was then said, in the first moment of indignant 
grief, be now unsaid. Not even the words of eulogistic love 
and admiration that were pressed burning from a nation's 
outraged heart, will give Abraham Lincoln so high a place 
in history, as will the sober pen of the historian, a hundred 
years from to-day, writing with cool nerve the simple facts 
of his life. For myself, the farther 1 get away from the 
inhuman scene of his death, the farther I go back of all the 
accidents and concomitants, whether of his death or his life, 
to the real man that he was, the more do I wonder and 



21 



admire. He has left words and deeds and a finished work 
of statesmanship and philanthropy, which, aside from all 
interest excited by his tragic fate, worthily secure to him, 
not only the present gratitude and homage of the nation, 
but historic immortality among the few great names that 
America has produced. Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, 
Lincoln, — will not these be the four names that, a hundred 
years hence, will shine with most lustre in the first century 
of our national history ? 

I would speak to-day no mere eulogy. There is no need 
to exaggerate or to conceal. In discussing such a character 
we can afford to utter the simple, naked facts. All rhetori- 
cal adornment seems but tinsel where there is such pure 
gold. I would keep strictly within the limits of truth and 
soberness, while I attempt, though with very inadequate 
success, to bring together some of the elements by which 
Abraham Lincoln's capacity, and place in history, must be 
measured. We shall find, also, that in this life and death, 
is matter for such history as Shakspeare wrote, which 
records not only outward events and measures outward 
greatness, but traces in national events and through indi- 
vidual lives the course and conflicts of absolute, vital 
principles ; and shows how men, though they die, yet triumph 
in their death, because over their graves the cause they lived 
for is lifted up out of the arena of conflict and passion, to 
receive ever after the undivided homage and reverence of 
the world. Abraham Lincoln, the man, is one of the noblest 
gifts of our Republic to history ; but Abraham Lincoln, the 
martyr, sanctifies republican freedom and makes our history 
forever sacred. 



22 



la measuring the character and historical value of this 
man, the first question to be asked is, What was his 
individuality? that is, had he original power in himself? 
were there in his own being such elements of strengtli that 
he impressed himself strongly upon other men and upon 
events ? did he have personal greatness and weight ? And 
this question is put first, because the answer to it is most 
obvious, and leads us to one of the main elements of Abra- 
ham Lincoln's character and national strength. 

We have had few public men in America — scarcely one, 
I think — more purely original, — scarcely one who relied 
more, or with greater safety and success, upon native, inborn 
capacity, and upon the individual convictions and experience 
developed out of native capacity. Few men, in any age or 
nation of the world, placed in so high a position, have borne 
its responsibilities so naturally and so easily, or, in the midst 
of great events and dangers, have assumed responsibility so 
naturally and borne it so safely. In the great crises of the - 
war, we have sometimes asked indeed for more show of 
power in the executive branch of the government ; we have 
wanted to be consciously led by the will of a strong man, 
and to see the display of that will in the nation. Yet all 
the while that we have been praying for a leader, this man 
has been really leading us. I doubt if we have ever had a 
president — I do not except even Jackson or Washington — 
who was more truly the leader and ruler of the people than 
Abraham Lincoln. And the fact that he took this position 
so easily, and held it so quietly, that the people were not 
conscious of his hand holding and guiding them, is additional 
and consummate proof that he possessed the individual, 



23 



native power that makes one a natural leader. He led 
without even knowing it himself. He disclaimed all idea of 
leadership, — disclaimed it in perfect sincerity; said that 
the president was the servant of the people and only followed 
to do their bidding. But in the very effort and claim to be 
their servant, he became their master. Refusing to put 
himself at the head of any party or clique, listening respect- 
fully and sincerely to all, but deciding for himself and taking 
the responsibility in his own hands at last, he became in 
reality the head of the nation. 

And this position he held, because of the inherent strength 
and force of his individual character. When the war first 
burst upon the country, and Abraham Lincoln — a Western 
lawyer, with little general culture and experience in states- 
manship — almost by accident was at the helm of affairs, 
selected with no reference to the great events that were 
coming, men began to look at each other with doubt and 
anxiety ; and prominent persons of the party that had elected 
him wished that they could have foreseen, so that they might 
have chosen a stronger man. But Providence foresaw, and 
was wiser than the politicians would have been, or were. 
They did at Chicago better than they knew. They were 
thinking only of a temporary availability during an elec- 
tioneering campaign, and so chose Abraham Lincoln for the 
presidential candidate j Providence, foreseeing a four years 
struggle with the power of slavery, was thinking of availa- 
bility in its highest sense, and so let them choose him. For 
had they foreseen, where would they have found their 
stronger man ? William H. Seward was then the foremost 
statesman of the party. Does any one now regret that ho 



24 



was not the successful candidate ? As events have proved, 
does any one believe that he has comprehended the struggle 
with a keener insight or with a broader grasp ? He has 
held the first place in the cabinet and done good service 
there ; some of us have sometimes thought that he had too 
much influence with the president for the president's good — 
that he was in reality president. But when the facts are 
all known, we shall find that the Western lawyer was never 
overmatched in his cabinet by the shrewd, cultivated, expe- 
rienced, philosophic statesman of New York. Nor would 
Chase have made a stronger president for the crisis. His 
policy, in some respects, from the outset might have been 
bolder and more radical ; personally, in the early stages of 
the war, it might have suited you and me better j but it 
would have inevitably put him at the head of a party rather 
than at the head of the loyal nation; and with all our 
admiration and reverence for him, we may well doubt 
whether he could have led the country through these four 
years of perils on the right hand and on the left so safely 
as it has been led under its actual leader. We have had, 
too, the benefit of his strength in the cabinet. 

And other strong men, officially and unofficially, have 
stood as advisers of the president. Yet he has stood the 
real head of the nation, clear and clean above them all. 
No ruler was ever readier to listen to opinions from all 
quarters, — to admit all comers, and give every class of men 
and every party and every individual citizen a chance to be 
heard. But all these opinions went through the crucible of 
his own keen judgment, and came out into deed through his 
own will, if they ever came out at all. His cabinet officers 



25 



sometimes complained that they were not even advisers, but 
only clerks, so independently did he frequently act of them. 
During Buchanan's administration, and for many years 
preceding, the policy of the government and all its great 
measures were decided by a vote of the cabinet, the presi- 
dent making himself strictly the executive of the will of 
the majority. Lincoln, from the outset, made the cabinet 
only an advisory body, seeking their advice or not according 
to his feeling of need, and in any event reserving to himself 
the right of decision. Sometimes he consulted a part with- 
out the knowledge of the rest ; sometimes took important 
steps without the knowledge of any of them. But equally, 
whether acting by their advice or not, the responsibility was 
always his, and he was willing and sought to bear it, not for 
ambition's but for conscience' sake, before the country and 
the world. Congress passed a resolution of censure against 
a member of his cabinet : immediately he sent a message to 
Congress, announcing that the acts censured were his, — and 
the country, though it had been clamorous against the secre- 
tary, said directly that the president was right." Again, a 
furious party were crying down the secretary of war for 
withholding supplies from, and secretly plotting against the 
success of, their favorite general : the president, in a public 
speech, said that he himself had done the deeds complained 
of, — and the people were silenced. He declared the report 
of a cabinet-officer to Congress to be his own, and changed 
it, if it ran counter to his own ideas. And so, generally, he 
never shrank from taking upon himself any responsibility in 
the conduct of affairs that the emergency demanded. He 
initiated measures and assumed powers that in any other 

D 



26 



time but that of war would have been in clear contravention 
of the Constitution ; and sometimes his habit of free and 
solitary action, even when there seemed to be no great 
emergency, alarmed the friends of the administration and 
excited the constitutional jealousy of Congress. And in 
any other man almost, in a selfish and ambitious man, such 
a habit would have been dangerous. But in him it was so 
balanced by transparent integrity, and unselfish, conscientious 
devotion to the country's good, that the people instinctively 
felt, whatever the opposing politicians might say, that the 
alarm was groundless and even ludicrous. Yet it was well, 
perhaps, that there were such sharp critics even among the 
friends of the administration, as Wade and Chandler and 
Winter Davis, to keep the old moorings of the Constitution 
and the powers and dignities of Congress in sight, that the 
people might easily lay hold of them again, in the event of 
a really dangerous man assuming arbitrary power. 

Now these acts and ways of the late president arc the 
acts and ways of a man of large original individuality and 
strength. * Not speaking of them now either to censure or 
to praise, but simply as evidence of character and capacity, 
they denote a man of great personal power ; of large native 
resources; of inherent ability to lead and command, — a man 
of independent thought and energy and will, — a man, who, 
though standing among strong men, impressed them more 
than he was impressed by them, and so showed himself 
stronger than they all. He impressed himself also upon 
events ; and, though wisely accepting their teachings — indeed, 
by accepting their teachings — kept himself always above 
them, and held them in a manner within his control. He 



27 



was strong enough to disregard custom and precedent and 
fashion, the politic ways of more experienced statesmen, 
and the secret arts of diplomacy, and to walk in a path of 
his own appointing, — to hew out his way, indeed, as he 
went along. And this he did with no bluster of innovation, 
with no appearance of meeting antagonistic forces, but with 
the quiet modesty and easy self-possession and assurance of 
true greatness. He did it from the sheer greatness of his 
manhood, — from the sheer strength and power of the native 
stuff out of which the individuality of his manhood was 
developed. We have not always, I know, accorded to him 
this commanding ability. But history, I believe, will correct 
our decision : we are already correcting it ourselves. 

Next, we are to inquire more particularly what were the 
elements of this large, commanding individuality ? through 
what special faculties came this general efficiency ? 

First, as to the intellectual. Dividing the intellect into 
the intuitive, or philosophical, intellect ; the imaginative, or 
poetical, intellect ; and the logical, or practical, intellect, — we 
should not claim for Mr. Lincoln any remarkable develop- 
ment of the two former divisions. In the imaginative and 
poetical faculties, he was deficient. He seems to have had 
little appreciation of the beautiful in any of its forms. He 
was as plain and rugged in his style of writing and thought 
as in his person and manners. He was entirely wanting in 
intellectual enthusiasm. His state papers, for the most 
part, though on subjects dear to his heart and of great 
popular interest, have been cold and practical only, and 
though satisfactory in substance, have awakened little popu- 
lar emotion. More imagination would have enhanced his 



28 



power. It would have given him an enthusiasm, a warmth, 
a consciousness something like the heroic of the magnitude 
of events and of his own part in them, which the people 
have missed, and to which they would have responded with 
a more buoyant patriotism. It might have made him even 
to their consciousness the leader and hero that he actuallv 

w 

was, so that he could have carried the country with greater 
ease than he did through some of the valleys of despondency 
and over the mountainous difficulties of the four years' 
struggle. 

Nor should we claim for President Lincoln any remarkable 
development of the intuitive, or philosophical, intellect. 
He was no metaphysician. He seldom traced even the 
great principles upon which he acted back to their absolute 
sources or grasped them in their theoretical relations. In 
establishing his principles, he did not go back farther than 
was necessary for the practical purpose in hand. He relied 
more upon observation and experience than upon intuition. 
Compared with Mr. Seward in respect to this, division of 
the intellect, he was inferior: yet perhaps the inferiority 
did not make him the worse leader for the times. Com- 
pared with Jefferson in this particular, he would fall far 
short; with Washington, he might stand on about the same 
level. 

But his practical and logical intellect was extraordinary. 
He had wonderful greatness and quickness of understand- 
ing, — an immense amount of common sense. In this was 
concentrated the whole force of his mental nature : and here 
lay one of the main elements of his individual power. 
Seward stood far below him in this regard ; and so, when it 



29 



came to affairs of practical statesmanship, the Western 
lawyer distanced his philosophical competitor on the first 
trial, though the latter had thirty years of public training 
behind him. In amount of practical intellect, neither Jeffer- 
son, nor Washington, nor even Franklin, was his superior. 
I think we have had no public man in America who, on this 
point, surpassed him. It was this that made him the keen 
and powerful logician, and the worthy antagonist, even in 
their own field, of greater philosophers and more experienced 
statesmen. It was this that gave him a style of oratory 
more convincing than any grace of manner or beauty of 
diction could have done : he had something sensible to say 
and he made his auditor see it to be sensible ; no rhetorical 
art could put things in writing more strongly than his plain 
common sense did. It was this — this extraordinary amount 
of practical common sense — that gave him his knowledge 
of men, and his quick insight into motives and character, 
and his ready understanding of the ways of managing men 
and quietly moving great affairs. It was this that, in his 
high position and among men of broad culture, more than 
made up for any deficiency in the knowledge of books and 
the polish of colleges. It was this in a great measure, 
combined with his remarkable humor — which also belonged 
to the practical side of his intellect — that kept the people 
on such terms of cordial understanding with him, and held 
them to him in such close bonds of sympathy and trust. 
Whenever there was dissatisfaction or partial alienation, a 
speech or a letter came, filled with such homely, honest 
words of common sense, that they drew men to him in 
admiration of his sagacity, and silenced, if they did not 



30 



convince. His letters to the Springfield Convention, and to 
Governor Magoffin and Mr. A. G. Hodges of Kentucky, arc 
specimens of argumentative political epistles hardly to be 
matched elsewhere. They are decisive, and make answers 
impossible. So also was the characteristic argument with 
which he pricked the bubble of Douglas's oft repeated pro- 
slavery sophistry of popular sovereignty. " My distinguished 
friend," said he, " says it is an insult to the emigrants of 
Kansas and Nebraska to suppose that they are not able to 
govern themselves. We must not slur over an argument of 
this kind because it happens to tickle the ear. It must be 
met and answered. I admit that the emigrant to Kansas 
and Nebraska is competent to govern himself, but I deny his 
right to govern any other person without that person's consent.' 11 
His public letters and speeches are filled with similar sharp 
thrusts of logic ; and he has left words of wisdom and wit 
that the world will never allow to die, — words that will 
give him a place in history among the first order of men 
honored for practical sagacity and power. 

But when we turn to President Lincoln's moral nature, we 
find a still richer field for admiration and study. In moral 
qualities he stood almost without a peer among the world's 
great rulers and magistrates. No living statesman surpasses 
him in that element of personal greatness that accrues from 
moral strength. In this regard, he goes above Jefferson 
and Franklin ; Washington is his only rival among our chief 
historic names ; and in some particulars he is superior even 
to Washington. The equanimity of Washington was some- 
times disturbed by the malicious charges and inventions of 
his enemies ; his rare dignity and reserve gave way, and he 



31 



stormed with indignant passion. Lincoln, though he may 
have had less of official and personal dignity, yet had a more 
equable temperament. Amidst all the partisan and personal 
strifes of these years of civil commotion and war — the 
slanders and indignities and evil machinations of his foes, the 
vexatious criticism and distrust and falling off of friends — 
his natural serenity and self-command seem never for a 
moment to have forsaken him. I do not think he has left a 
harsh or bitter word against his worst or most annoying 
enemy ; for there was no harshness or bitterness in his heart, 
not in its most secret corner. He was capable of feeling 
only pity, charity, and forgiveness. Unconsciously he wrote 
the motto of his own life in the phrase of his last Inaugural, — 
"Malice toward none, charity for all." 

There was, too, a wonderful warmth and tenderness in 
his moral nature. The people felt the pulsations of a great 
brotherly heart beating within that gaunt, ill-compacted 
frame, and making even it almost beautiful. His eyes were 
great deeps of sympathy and honest affection ; transparent, 
yet no one ever saw to the bottom of them. His mouth 
moved naturally to expressions of sincerity and good-will ; 
and his whole face, which, when in repose, was heavy and 
melancholic in its cast, was transfigured with a strange and 
tender beauty, when anything touched the subtle wires that 
made connection with his heart, and sent upward its thrilling 
pulses : and his heart was always the first part of him to be 
touched. Pressed on all sides by the gravest public cares 
and anxieties, he could yet find time to write with his own 
hand to a poor woman in Boston, who had given five sons 
to glorious deaths for the republic on the field of battle, and 



32 



whose sixth was lying severely wounded. — a letter which, 
to that lone woman, will always be a more precious legacy 
of wealth than all the riches which a grateful government 
or a generous public could give her. After a wearying day 
in his office, burdened with dispatches to be read, with 
papers to be examined and judged, with personal calls and 
questions innumerable, private and public, to be disposed 
of, seeking finally, long past the accustomed hour, to retreat 
to his private room for rest, he hears without the door a 
sound like the hushed cry of a child. Immediately weari- 
ness is forgotten, the usher is summoned and asked, if a 
woman with a child in her arms is in the ante-room. " Yes, 
sir, — been trying three days to see you, and on a very 
important matter, if I may be permitted to say it," was the 
answer. " Let her come in at once," responded the presi- 
dent. And soon the poor woman goes out again, with light 
steps now, her hunger and weariness forgotten, and covering 
her baby with kisses and tears of joy ; for she has saved her 
soldier son's life. Thus did our dear president never weary 
of kind and merciful deeds. He could not help doing them. 
And this moral tenderness compensated in considerable 
measure for his want of intellectual enthusiasm, and sent 
some throbs of warmth even through his mental dryness 
and coldness. It shows itself in his official papers, other- 
wise so wanting in fervor, and gives to them sometimes a 
pleading, persuasive earnestness and pathos, that might 
almost draw the tears from an enemy. When his pen goes 
down to this part of his nature, his words, always clear and 
strong, come forth mellowed with beauty, and rise some- 
times into real grandeur. What could be more gentle, or 



33 



more touching in its simple eloquence, than the closing 
words of his first Inaugural address : " I am loath to close. 
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. 
Though passion may have strained, it must not break our 
bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory, stretched 
from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living 
heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet 
swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely 
they will be, by the better angels of our nature." 

This natural kindness of his heart showed itself every- 
where, in all his domestic and social and public life ; made 
him the good husband and father, as well as good president ; 
and held those who were his intimate friends very close to 
him with a rare greatness of love. Combined with his sense 
of justice and his democratic principles, it rose also to the 
height of philanthropy, and made him, in the providence 
of God, the natural and inevitable leader of this nation in 
its struggle with the powers of despotism and slavery, and 
the trusted and now glorified redeemer of an oppressed 
and outraged race. 

But not alone by these rare qualities was his moral nature 
characterized. All the moral sentiments and faculties appear 
to have been fully and symmetrically developed in him. 
No vices are recorded against him ; and this, in itself, indi- 
cates a rare virtue. We should not credit him, perhaps, with 
the most delicate moral sensitiveness. His moral strength 
lay rather in principles and habits than in nicety of feeling. 
He had a large and powerful conscience, which ruled his 
own conduct with a puritanic severity; but he had no 
moral squeamishness, which repelled him from all contact 



34 



with vice itself and from vicious men. He knew very well 
that the world, in the present ethical state of mankind, 
could not be governed by saints alone, — that the good could 
not withdraw from the bad, but must stand together with 
them, in order that the whole may be made better as fast as 
possible. He did not remove men from office, or decline to 
appoint men to office, because of any bad habits they may 
have had, provided their bad habits would not detract from 
their usefulness for the work assigned them. It is reported — 
and probably with truth — that, when, during the siege of 
Vicksburg, some delegation asked for the removal of Gen- 
eral Grant because of his alleged intemperate use of whiskey, 
the President replied, that he would like to ascertain what 
kind of whiskey General Grant was in the habit of using, 
that he might give it to some of the other generals. Yet 
the president himself was temperate to the degree of total 
abstinence; and he made this reply, not because he was 
insensible to the evil of intemperance in the army, but 
because he believed, what has proved to be the case, that 
General Grant, with the immense responsibility that was 
placed upon him, would have strength to resist temptation, 
and so give unimpaired his consummate ability to the salva- 
tion of the republic. President Lincoln was no moral 
Pharisee. He was a Pharisee in no respect. He had none 
of the u I-am-holier-than-thou " spirit. He grasped the hand 
of every man as a brother. He was no moral exquisite, 
standing aloof from his kind, with nerves too delicate for 
contact with men of common frailties. 

Yet, though his moral nature was not of the extremely 
sensitive order, it was extraordinarily strong and sure, and 



35 



was never harmed by contact with vice. He was eminently 
above being influenced by evil example. He had an integ- 
rity upon which the foulest slander of partisan strife has 
left no stain; an honesty that at once summoned and held 
the confidence of the country ; a frankness and sincerity that 
astonished politicians accustomed to concealed and sinister 
ways; a simplicity of habit that excited the derision of 
fashionable and conventional circles of society ; a conscien- 
tiousness that knew no indirection,, and startled the habitues 
of political circles in Washington; an ambition that aimed 
only at his country's welfare, and saw only his country's 
glory; an unselfish, unswerving, unflagging devotion of him- 
self and all his means and abilities to what he saw to be 
right; a humility that never knew pretence, and never 
even allowed him credit for his good deeds ; and a moral 
courage that, though not bold at radical innovation, was 
never prevented from innovation by any thought of popularity 
or unpopularity, and which held to every step that had been 
taken from a conviction of its justice, and to every principle 
that had been adopted because it was right, with a firmness 
that was anchored to the very throne of God. Here are 
moral qualities that made Abraham Lincoln preeminently 
the moral leader for the times. "When we sum them up, .we 
have a greatness of moral nature for which we shall not 
soon find the peer among the great magistrates of the world. 
President Lincoln's moral qualities rose naturally into the 
religious ; and of the religious character of the man, we 
come, finally, to speak. But here he has a right to the 
reserve which covers every person's deepest and inmost life. 
Because we have put a man into a public position and made 



30 



him our servant, it does not give us a claim to enter with 
hiin into his closet, to lurk as eaves-droppcrs for his prayers, 
or to sit in judgment on his religious emotions. I shall not 
seek to spy behind the sacredness of this private veil. It 
is the religious character of the man only so far as publicly 
manifest that we have any right or proper interest to 
examine. 

And keeping within these limits, we should not say that 
President Lincoln had the finest spiritual quality. He was 
not a Fenelon, a Thomas a Kempis, a Channing, or an Edwards . 
He lacked the intuitional faculty, I judge, in spiritual things 
as he did in intellectual ; and, as was necessary from his 
cast of mind, he approached religion from the ethical and 
practical side. With its metaphysics or its prophecies, its 
theologies or its ecstacies, its Transcendental visions or its 
Methodistic raptures, he did not trouble himself. His re- 
ligion was on the broad level of common sense. His sharp 
logic and keen humor could not fail to perceive and prick 
some of the long-standing theological absurdities, — as when, 
in his reply to an ecclesiastical delegation who, in the com- 
mon phrase of their faith, had expressed the hope that the 
Lord would be on his side, he said : " I have not given 
myself any care whether the Lord is on our side ; but I do 
feel anxious that myself and the people should be on the 
Lord's side." 

Whatever were his ecclesiastical associations or training, 
we may be sure that such a mind was thoroughly unsectarian 
and liberal. There was no cant in his religion ; no meaning- 
less professions of piety. He, clearly, believed more in 
performing duty than in subscribing to theologies, — believed 



37 



in a religion of righteousness-^- of obedience to God and 
helpfulness towards man. I do not credit the account, 
recently published, of an interview had with him by some 
Western clergyman, in which phrases are put into the presi- 
dent's mouth that sound very much like the exclamations 
heard in an excited meeting of revivalists. They do not 
tally with his marked characteristics of calmness and re- 
ligious sobriety ; he was no spiritual, more than intellectual, 
enthusiast; and this account doubtless received its flavor of 
pious zeal from the fervid evangelical conduits through which 
it passed. Nor, on the other hand, do I give much weight 
to what I heard on better authority, in Washington, — that 
President Lincoln was a warm admirer of Theodore Parker, 
and in sympathy with that great heresiarch's rationalistic 
views of religion, — though, from the cast of Mr. Lincoln's 
mind, I should credit this report sooner than the other : I 
can well conceive that he would find much to attract him in 
Mr. Parker's plain, practical sense in religious things, and in 
the rugged, homely way in which he dealt with some of the 
metaphysical absurdities of theology. There was really 
much in common between the characters of the two men, — 
so much, that of this we may be sure : whatever Mr. Lincoln's 
theological views were, and though it is not very probable 
they were in agreement with Mr. Parker's — quite likely he 
had not even read Mr. Parker's books — yet he would not 
have been frightened away, by any theological heresies of 
Mr. Parker, from admiring the sturdy moral courage of the 
man, or sympathizing with his efforts for the advancement 
of public morals and the elevation of humanity. Outwardly, 
President Lincoln was connected with the Presbyterians, — 



38 



that is, when he had leisure from public duties, he went to 
a Presbyterian church, and probably, without giving much 
thought to the matter, accepted in the main the doctrines there 
preached ; but he was not a member of any church, and not 
an habitual attendant on the services of any. He was too 
broad to be a zealot of any sect ; too practical to care much 
for the creed of any. He believed in a religion of work 
and duty. 

Yet he was also a man of prayer, and faith, and trust. 
This country has hardly had a president who tried more 
sincerely to know and to do God's will; or who had a 
stronger belief in an overwatching and overruling Provi- 
dence. When he said in respect to the progress and 
issues of the war, that God alone could claim to have con- 
trolled events, we see that the language in his mouth was 
no common-place of piety, and no mere convenient phrase- 
ology, easily used, as an apology for some unexpected 
or uncomprehended turn of affairs ; but that the words 
expressed what he really meant and believed. More and 
more he came to consider himself as but an instrument in 
the hands of the Almighty. 

His faith, it is true, was of conviction, rather than of 
temperament; his trust, the lesson learned through the 
stern tasks of an eventful life, rather than the childlike 
instinct of dependence. He had no ecstacies of faith. It 
was not given him to see spiritual visions. His religion did 
not fly ; it had to walk the whole dusty way of life ; it kept 
him close to the duty of earth, seldom allowing him even a 
glimpse of the height or splendor of heaven. We could 
wish, for his own joy, that his trust had been more intuitional ; 



39 



that his spiritual temperament had been more ardent and 
hopeful ; that the severe tasks of duty had been sometimes 
relieved by the prophetic imagination of coming glory. 
Yet, though not, by nature, of a peculiarly religious organi- 
zation, he did come to a very sublime height of religious 
faith, — came to it through years of patient toil and endur- 
ance and suffering and brave fidelity to duty. We have had 
presidents who were more punctual in religious observances ; 
but we never had one who believed more really in God, or 
more truly walked with Him in daily life. In the speeches 
and official papers of no former president, has religious faith 
shown itself to be so vital an element of character and of 
official conduct. From the day that he took leave of his 
neighbors in Illinois and requested them to remember him 
in their prayers, to the morning that his soul, through ruffian 
violence, was released from its weary, toil-worn body, his 
life was inspired, and sustained, and borne up higher every 
day, by this firm trust in God. Literally, he believed himself 
to be president of the republic '•' under God." His utter- 
ances of faith are sometimes of the Cromwellian order. 
Still, there was no rapture of divine communion, no enthusi- 
asm, no fanaticism. There was stern self-denial and self- 
consecration ; but no joyous abandonment of self to religious 
emotion. He made vows before God, and was in agony of 
travail until they should be accomplished. His will was 
utterly surrendered to the divine will ; but it was the con- 
scious self-surrender of a strong man to Almighty power 
and wisdom, rather than the instinctive nestling of a depend- 
ent child in the arms of Infinite love. 

But, though with never ceasing strain upon his will, and 



40 



with a sense of duty never relaxed, lie had to climb the 
whole rugged ascent to his height of faith, what a sublime 
height it was when once attained ! His last inaugural 
address measures a majesty and comprehensiveness of re- 
ligious faith of which we shall hardly find the like among 
all the great civil magistrates of the world, living or dead. 
It reminds us of Cromwell's official speech ; but it surpasses 
the papers of England's Great Protector, since it rises above 
all taint of bigotry and all color and warmth of partisanship. 
Unique as a State paper, we shall with difficulty find for it 
a fitting comparison save in the utterances of Moses, Isaiah; 
and Paul. Here is a faith which has come " out of great 
tribulation," and washed its robes, and made them white in 
the blood of sacrifice ; a faith which " through much tribula- 
tion " has climbed very close to the portal of the kingdom 
of God. Let the stealthy assassin strike when he will. 
Any moment will be too soon for the nation ; but for such 
a faith, earth can never too soon pass away : for Heaven is 
already won. 

The memorial of this man, my friends, is with us. Great 
in personal influence and power, great in logical and practi- 
cal ability, great in all moral and humane faculties, great in 
religious faith, Abraham Lincoln takes his position by 
unquestionable right in the calendar of exceptional great 
men. The leader of one of the four greatest civil powers 
of the world in a triumphant contest against the most 
gigantic rebellion that the world has known ; the represent- 
ative of democratic liberty in a fierce struggle for national 
existence with aristocracy and despotism ; the emancipator 



41 



of millions of slaves, and, through the connection of events, 
the practical destroyer of the institution of slavery through- 
out the whole territory of the United States ; the martyr, 
slain in the hour of his triumph by the consummate wicked- 
ness of the cause he had contended against, and sealing his 
testimony to democratic liberty with his blood, — he will 
take his place in history, not only among the men of rare 
greatness, but among the great men who had also rare 
opportunities, and filled them with rare achievements. Great 
in endeavor and in power, great always in goodness, he was 
equally great in fortune and success. To his name the 
muse of history will affix the title, — the Preserver of the 
American Union ; the Destroyer of American slavery; the 
Representative Man of American Democracy. The memo- 
rial of his virtue is immortal : being " known with God and 
with men." Present, it was our example and guide ; gone, 
we desire it : " it weareth a crown and triumpheth forever, 
having gotten the victory, striving for undefiled rewards." 
National Fast, June 1, 1865. 



IY. 



THE DRAMATIC ELEMENT IN THE CAREER OF 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be tho death of the testator : for a 
testament is of force after men are dead. Hebrews ix. 1G, 17. 

I owe, perhaps, an apology for venturing to renew a 
theme on which so much has already been spoken, and for 
attempting to say to-day what might have been more appro- 
priately said last Thursday, had not the subject grown under 
my pen into unforeseen proportions. But it is sweet to 
linger in the fragrance of a good man's memory. The part, 
moreover, that Abraham Lincoln has acted in our history 
can never become old or worn. It is a career upon which 
historians will ever love to dwell, and which will never lose 
its charm for the people. And after all that has been spoken 
and written concerning him, there is yet one phase of his 
wonderful life and tragic destiny which has great attractive- 
ness, and which I have hinted at once or twice in previous 
discourses, but which, so far as I have seen, has not anywhere 
been fully developed or much noticed. Mr. Sumner, in his 
eulogy just spoken, touches more closely upon what I refer 
to than any other writer or speaker whose words have come 



43 



to my eye ; but the object he had proposed to himself did 
not allow him to more than skirt the border of this phase 
of the great theme. 

The point of view that I have in mind, is the •perfect dra- 
matic unity and progress of Abraham Lincoln's life; — the 
wonderful line of destiny, or of providence, by which his 
career, from his birth to his death, was unfolded, in all its 
parts and acts, and through all its shiftings of place and 
scene and time, on the thread of a single vital truth, and to 
a single moral end. This life moves across the stage of 
history with the dramatic march of one of Homer's heroes. 
The stern demands of ancient Grecian tragedy were not 
more observed by its great artists in their greatest works, 
than they have been observed in the actual life of this 
American president. Here must be no side issues ; no con- 
founding of moral lessons ; no division and distraction of 
one prevailing moral purpose and force ; no departure, amid 
whatever private or professional or domestic • episodes, or 
whatever change and variety of action, from the one truth 
which this individual career from its outset was chosen to 
embody and to teach for humanity : from its entrance on the 
stage of earthly being to its exit, this life must be moved 
by one inexorable purpose and will, and march to one inevi- 
table fate, — in order to print upon the heart of the world one 
of the grandest truths of human civilization and government 
and progress. 

This is our theme. But why bring it here, and make it a 
subject of religious meditation ? It may belong to the 
dramatist and the poet, it may serve the uses of the lecture- 
room and the magazine, but why bring it to the church ? 



44 



Because, first, there is a providence behind the scenes — the 
hidden, infinite manager of the great drama. The ancients 
called it fate, destiny; we call it Providence, God, the 
Infinite Spirit. Abraham Lincoln, though self-possessed to 
an extraordinary degree, though having great independence 
and originality of being, and native resources and capacities 
very largely at his command, was yet impelled, as few men 
have been, by a power beyond his own, — possessed, used, 
chosen for a special work, by a spirit above himself. And, 
secondly, I bring the theme here, because of the grand moral 
importance to humanity of the truth which his life was 
selected thus dramatically to unfold and teach. 

And what is this truth ? It is the truth of republican 
freedom, simplicity, and equality ; in one word, the truth of 
Democracy, as theoretically stated by Jefferson in the open- 
ing sentences of the Declaration of Independence. By the 
strict line of this truth, the life of Abraham Lincoln, act by 
act, and scene by scene, was developed, from the day his 
eyes first saw the light in a log-cabin on the western fron- 
tier of civilization, to the day when, as president of the 
United States, standing at the very topmost height of official 
position and honor, he was slain by the hand of an assassin, 
and those eyes closed forever to mortal things. To this 
truth he was born ; to it he was apprenticed by the necessary 
conditions of his lot, during all the years of his boyhood 
and youth ; at manhood it became his property purchased 
by conviction ; it stamped henceforward his whole character, 
and all his personal, social, and professional habits ; when 
he was called into political life, this was at once his creed 
and the central principle of all his measures and acts ; and 



45 



when this truth was challenged and defied by rebellion to 
the government founded upon it, then he, seemingly by 
accident, yet inevitably, became the leader of the loyal hosts 
in the fierce struggle with despotism and slavery, — led 
them to triumph, and, in the hour of triumph, fell : fell that 
he might have the greater triumph, — as the Greek tragedians 
made their heroes fall, in order that they might ascend to 
Olympus and to the society of the gods ; — fell that he might 
seal his testament to this truth of republican |jeedom, sim- 
plicity, and equality, with his blood, and sanctify it henceforth 
as the solemnly established polity of the nation. Is not 
here a life-drama such as is seldom enacted on this earth ? 

But let us bring out some of its features in fuller relief. 
Let us see how, in every part of its course, this career is 
vitalized, and its direction and progress determined, by the 
truth I have stated, — see how close the hidden, inimitable 
Artist ever holds it to the one purposed aim, — how statelily 
and solemnly it advances, by steps that seem almost to know 
whither they tend, to the inevitable tragic end. 

The drama opens in the rudest and humblest condition of 
democratic life, — the'farthest possible removed from wealth 
and culture, and from any influences that may have been 
transmitted across the seas from the forms and refinements 
of monarchical civilization. Not amid the schools and cities 
and growing luxuries of the East, but in the far West, where 
nothing is yet established but the pure democratic idea, 
must the hero be born who is to testify for that idea through 
life and by death. He must be born of nothing but pure 
democracy. The world must see that this future republican 
ruler owed nothing by birth save to republican freedom, 



46 



simplicity, and equality. Therefore he is born in a hut 
without floor, with but one room, with no articles of luxury, 
with very few even of comfort or necessity ; born to toil 
and poverty ; born of parents having no lineage, no learning, 
no library, — having nothing but a little spot of soil, and a 
rough shelter over their heads, and honest hearts, and hard 
working hands. Yet according to the theory of the country 
written in the Declaration of Independence, and partially 
established ^y the revolution, those parents are a part of 
the sovereignty of the land; and from their loins must be 
born the strong man who is to be leader and ruler of the 
nation through the severest contest that Democracy has ever 
known, and who is to testify to all history, and throughout 
all time, for the truth of the democratic idea. 

But the contest against Democracy has already begun. 
There is an institution in the land that flagrantly denies its 
most fundamental principles, — an institution of caste, ine- 
quality, oppression, and despotism. This institution has 
spread out to the frontier settlements. It is closing around 
that democratic nut, menacing its prosperity, its virtue, and 
the precious promise it holds. Slavery joins issue with the 
democratic idea in Kentucky, and threatens utterly to over- 
whelm it. But the times are not yet ripe for the great 
struggle ; the hero is still a boy ; the strength and integrity 
that his honest parentage and home have given him must be 
saved from contamination. The drama is just beginning. 
Not prematurely must the crisis be developed. The parents, 
indeed, do not thus reason with conscious reference to the 
future : but the genius of the republic is jealously guarding 
its hero ; the prophetic Spirit of Truth, sitting calm behind 



47 

the scenes, will not permit the whole future to be changed 
and robbed at this dangerous point. The little spot of 
land, which slavery was already beginning to envelop and 
impoverish, is sold j the rude home is abandoned ; the parents 
escape from the snares and dangers of slaveholding Ken- 
tucky, and seek across the Ohio, still farther in the wilder- 
ness, a new home, but on free soil. 

And now still further is our hero trained for the stern 
tasks of democratic sovereignty before him. It seems as if 
he must understand every atom of that sovereignty, by going 
through the condition of every individual constituent of it, 
before he can be ready to assume it in his own person for 
the great ends designed. Hence he must exhaust every 
democratic occupation from the most menial to the most 
honored. He is a pioneer, and day after day, with sturdy 
blows, cuts a way through the forest to his home and to the 
land that is to feed him ; he is a farmer, and by the sweat 
of his brow gathers his daily bread from the soil ; he is a 
mechanic, and helps build the family house and its furniture j 
he is a famous rail-splitter, and fences the farm with his own 
hands ; he is a flatboatman down the Mississippi ; he is a 
clerk in a store j he is a militia captain, and has a little 
touch of war in the Indian troubles of the frontier ; he sets 
up in business by himself as a country trader j he is post- 
master, land-surveyor, and finally lawyer and legislator. 

And all this time, too, he is gathering knowledge, — not 
in schools and colleges and lyceums and public libraries, but 
out among the Western forests and prairies j gleaning from 
nature, from life, and from the few books to be found among 
his scattered neighbors or bought with hard-earned savings j 



48 



laboring over his books in solitude by his democratic fireside, 
with his solitary democratic brain j — gathering knowledge, 
not to veneer over weakness and poverty of capacity, not 
enough even to cover and conceal the rugged fibre and 
homely solidity of the native stuff from which his being is 
made ; all his knowledge is perfectly assimilated and used 
by his nature : for this man, born out of the loins of pure 
Democracy, and destined to be the leader of American 
Democracy in a deadly contest for national existence and to 
die its martyr, must be purely American and democratic 
through every nerve and fibre and pulse of his being. 

But again the scene changes. The great struggle between 
Democracy and Despotism is approaching. The hosts are 
preparing on either side for the combat, and the destined 
leader of freedom must come forth into the public arena. 
Already in Congress he had voted steadily for freedom and 
equality in the national territories, and even at that early 
day had tried to make the national capital free soil. But 
now the contest had thickened, and the smell of blood was 
already in the land. The virgin soil of Kansas was the 
prize. Should it be polluted and ruined by the demon of 
slavery, or given in pure wedlock to freedom ? The plot 
against Democracy begins to unfold its horrors : the " coming 
man " must now come. Unavoidably he is drawn from his 
retirement into the political field; and, although several 
years have yet to pass before he is hailed as leader, his 
powerful sword can never be sheathed again. 

In the contest concerning Kansas, and in the famous 
Senatorial campaign with Stephen A. Douglas, which grew 
out of the Kansas conflict, it is remarkable how sharply the 



49 



lines were drawn between freedom and slavery ; how the 
debates constantly turned on this one point ; and how radical 
and thorough Mr. Lincoln's utterances always were as the 
chosen champion of liberty. It is to be noticed, too, how 
he uniformly planted himself on the broad ground of the 
Declaration of Independence, — that is, of free and equal 
government for all classes and races; and he attacked 
slavery, because slavery attacked this invincibly true and 
fundamental principle of the Republic. 

And at this point in the development of this dramatic 
history, we come to a very important and rarely noticed 
fact, — the key of the wonderful drama. Abraham Lincoln 
was the first politician or statesman who publicly proclaimed 
the doctrine of the " irrepressible conflict " of ideas between 
the South and the North. This he did on the 17th of 
June — the anniversary of the battle of Bunker Hill — 1858, 
in a speech to the State Convention of Illinois, which 
nominated him for Senator against Douglas. That speech 
opened almost with the words now become so famous and 
familiar : "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I 
believe this government cannot endure permanently half 
slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dis- 
solved — I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect 
it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or 
all the other." And this was the beginning of that noted 
Senatorial campaign, which was but preliminary to the 
Presidential campaign. It was the striking of the key-note 
of this great American contest; it was the clarion voice of 
the true, destined leader, summoning the hosts of freedom 
to his standard. For, mark you again, this was the first 

G 



50 



political utterance of the doctrine of the irrepressible con- 
flict between freedom and slavery, declaring that one of the 
antagonists, even in the domain of the States, must yield 
before the other. The moral reformers — the abolitionists — 
had declared it ; but no statesman or leading politician 
proclaimed it before Abraham Lincoln. It was he that first 
took up and ingrafted upon the politics of the country the 
moral ideas of the abolition reformers. He made this 
remarkable speech several months before Mr. Seward took 
the same idea, clothed it in philosophic shape, and christened 
it by the name of " irrepressible conflict." 

Can we longer wonder that Abraham Lincoln should be 
the chosen leader of the hosts of democracy and freedom, 
when this conflict comes to arms ? that he, the first states- 
man who announced the divine necessity of the moral con- 
flict, should be summoned to represent divine justice in the 
martial struggle, and to give thereto the costly testimony 
of his life ? Not otherwise could the drama preserve its 
unity. Blind fate, destiny, could have made no other choice. 
Shall Providence be less wise than destiny ? Shall the pro- 
phetic, preparing, managing Spirit, be balked of its purpose ? 
Shall a mighty national contest, involving national existence 
and the virtue and happiness of millions of human beings, 
be subject to accident? its sublime end postponed or 
thwarted by some political marplot ? No ! Providence is 
as grandly steady as destiny or fate ; and not more inevi- 
tably, in the old Greek tragedy, did the fate-impelled hero, 
at the proper moment, come upon the stage, than did Abra- 
ham Lincoln, in the dramatic ripeness of events, assume the 
political leadership of this nation. Consciously or uncon- 



51 



sciously, when the clash of arms had come, the hosts of 
loyalty and liberty could only rally around the man whose 
voice had first uttered the true battle-cry. And therefore 
it was that, when that moment came, we found Abraham 
Lincoln, the leader that democratic freedom had been' pre- 
paring in the West, in the President's chair at Washington, 
and Commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United 
States. 

And now events hasten more rapidly to the grand 
denouement. Yet, like Hamlet, the hero hesitates. Ho 
dreads the awful conflict. He shrinks, as it were, from the 
very greatness of the task imposed upon him. Already, 
too, villany lurks in his path, — assassination is dogging his 
steps ; and he walks henceforth as if burdened with a mys- 
terious, foreboding consciousness of his destiny. In his 
kindly, democratic nature, there should be, and is, no taste 
for civil war and blood. He tries to conciliate, — puts forth 
his arm to avert the rushing fates : he holds the chalice of 
the Constitution to the white, maddened lips of the foe. 
But all in vain. With boastful, furious words, the cup is 
dashed to the ground: "We have a new Constitution, 
founded on the divine right of slavery, — we fight for it, and 
take and give no quarter ! " And so freedom's leader is 
held to his divinely purposed work, — defied by despotism, 
until forced in self-defence into the impregnable citadel of 
equal justice. 

Yet the steps were all taken, not in passion, not in routed 
haste, but deliberately and with dignity ; some of us thought 
too slowly and hesitatingly taken, and feared lest freedom 
would be betrayed. But the great Dramatist knew better 



52 



than we, — knew the metal of the man; and knew he would 
not, could not, yield the principle to which his life had been, 
as it were by solemn vow, devoted. 

Months before, in his contest with Douglas, with inspired 
earnestness, and in the old Roman spirit of absolute self- 
consecration to the highest welfare of the Republic, he had 
exclaimed : 

" Think nothing of me ; take no thought for the political 
fate of any man whatsoever, but come back to the truths 
that are in the Declaration of Independence. You may do 
anything with me you choose, if you will but heed these 
sacred principles. You may not only defeat me for the 
Senate, but you may take me and put me to death. * * * * 
I charge you to drop every paltry, insignificant thought for 
any man's success. It is nothing. I am nothing. Judge 
Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that immortal 
emblem of humanity — the Declaration of Independence." 

And again, on his way to Washington, in the old Indepen- 
dence Hall in Philadelphia, after inquiring what great senti- 
ment it was in the Declaration there adopted which held 
the Colonies so firmly together in the revolutionary struggle, 
he answered, " It was that sentiment which gave liberty, 
not alone to the people of this country, but I hope, to the 
world, for all future time ; it was that which gave promise 
that in due time the weight would be lifted from the 
shoulders of all men,"— and then he added, — "If this coun- 
try cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was 
about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot 
than surrender it," — and closed the remarkable speech with 
the solemn words : " I have said nothing but what I am 
willing to live by, and if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, 



53 



die by." It was not in the nature of the man who had 
given himself to the whole truth of republican government 
with such vows as these, and whom the angel of the Republic 
was guarding for her highest service and greatest glory, to 
betray the sacred office for which he had thus received 
Heaven's commission. He was cautious; he saw every 
difficulty in the way; for a time it seemed as if he reasoned 
with destiny ; but he could not betray the cause so solemnly 
committed to his hands. 

He was mortal, indeed, and with all the care in preparing 
him for his high office, it was impossible that he should 
escape entirely all infection of the evil from which the whole 
nation suffered. He still had some respect for the local 
laws of slavery. And so the conflict must go on in him, as 
in the nation, until he should be purified by the fires of 
battle from all taint of the evil, and. be lifted clear above 
all its entanglements, ready to strike the fatal blow with 
full moral strength. Observe, too, that consistently with 
his past record and training, he came to the contest, not as 
an abolitionist per se, but on the broad ground of democracy. 
He was an emancipationist because a true democrat. He 
believed in freedom and equality for all, and therefore for 
the black man. He came to the conflict not avowedly to 
destroy slavery, but to save democratic government; and he 
destroyed slavery because incompatible with the continued 
existence of democratic government. The one is the broader 
position, and necessarily includes the other. Democracy 
necessitates abolitionism. This is the truth he is to proclaim 
to the world, and lead on to victory. 

And now see the solemn steps of the grand march. We 



54 



shall notice that there is no retrograde movement, — that 
there is really no delay, — that every step comes in its place 
with the sublime constancy of fate, but also with the pater- 
nal, humane promise of a tender Providence ; and that every 
step lifts the nation upward upon higher and broader ground, 
and nearer to the glory of its final triumph. Even in the 
first Inaugural Address, though conciliatory and seeking in 
some respects by compromise to avert the conflict, the key- 
note of democratic faith and assurance is sounded. " Why," 
said the President, " should there not be a patient confi- 
dence in the ultimate justice of the people ? Is there any 
better or equal hope in the world ? In our present differ- 
ences, is either party without faith of being in the right ? 
If the Almighty Ruler of events, with his eternal truth and 
justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the 
• South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail, by the 
judgment of this great tribunal of the American people." 
We passed these words by at the time with little notice ; 
but now that the drama is complete, they sound like the 
solemn utterances of the chorus in ancient tragedy, pro- 
nouncing upon the gathering combatants the warning and 
the judgment of the gods. It was the presiding, oracular 
genius of the Republic that uttered them, giving judgment 
in advance. 

Again, in the first message to Congress, dated July 4, 
1861, though slavery is not directly attacked, there are 
brave sentences that strike at its root, and that must one 
day strike the fetters from all men's limbs. " This is essen- 
tially a people's contest. On the side of the Union it is a 
struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance 



55 
I 

of government whose leading object is to elevate the con- 
dition of men ; to lift artificial weights from all shoulders ; 
to clear the paths of laudable pursuits for all ; to afford all 
an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life." 
None but the Western pioneer, cradled in poverty, and, by 
his own sturdy hands and the "fair chance " that democratic 
institutions put into them, hewing his way into public posi- 
tion by a purely democratic path, could have uttered these 
words from the Presidential chair. Already we see in them 
the promise of a united and emancipated country. These 
are the same syllables that, by a little change of articulation, 
are to pronounce Richmond fallen, and the slave of South 
Carolina free. 

In the message of December, 1861, there is an elaborate 
discussion, on principles of political economy, of the question 
of capital and labor, — in which the pure democratic ground 
is taken, that labor is superior to capital, and must be free 
and own capital, and not capital, labor. The discussion 
seemed to us abstract and ill-adapted to the pressing emer- 
gency of the hour ; but we see now how fittingly it takes 
its place in the great struggle to complete the loyal argu- 
ment. It is the bud of emancipation in the loyal border 
states. It is an appeal to prudent, thinking men', on grounds 
of industrial prosperity and self-interest. It brings the 
reenforcement of material and social well-being to the cause 
of divine justice. Hear, too, how at the close, the grand 
choral strain comes in again, giving utterance to the sublimer 
principles that underlie the irrepressible conflict, and sum- 
moning the contestants again to the bar of future judgment. 

" This [the free system of labor] is the just, and generous, 



56 

I 

and prosperous system, which opens the way to all, gives 
hope to all, and consequent energy, and progress, and im- 
provement of condition to all. No men living are more 
worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty, — 
none less inclined to take or touch aught which they have 
not honestly earned. Let them beware of surrendering a 
political power which they already possess, and which, if 
surrendered, will surely be used to close the door of ad- 
vancement against such as they, and to fix new disabilities 
and burdens upon them, till all of liberty shall be lost. * * 
The struggle of to-day is not altogether for to-day ; it is for 
a vast future also." 

Closely following — only three months later — a special 
message is sent to Congress, recommending the passage of 
a resolution by which the federal government shall be 
authorized to cooperate by pecuniary aid with any state that 
will enact gradual abolition of slavery. Two months after- 
ward, in a public proclamation, attention is called to this 
resolution, which was adopted by Congress, and the states 
most interested are earnestly appealed to, to avail themselves 
quickly of its privilege. Says the President, — 

"You cannot, if you would, be blind to the signs of 
the times. I beg of you a calm and enlarged considera- 
tion of them, ranging, if it may be, far above partisan 
and personal politics. This proposal makes common cause 
for a common object, casting no reproaches upon any. It 
acts not the Pharisee. The change it contemplates would 
come gently as the dews of heaven, not rending or wrecking 
anything. Will you not embrace it ? So much good has 
not been done by one effort in all past time, as in the provi- 
dence of God it is now your high privilege to do. May the 
vast future not have to lament that you have neglected it." 

And so the chorus echoes back with added intensity the 



57 



divine plea of impartial justice that was the sublime burden 
of the previous message. 

In the regular message of December, 1862, the same sub- 
ject is taken up again, and discussed more elaborately and 
with greater scope. It is now proposed that Congress 
shall not wait for the states to accept, at their option, its 
offer of pecuniary aid toward emancipation, but shall initiate 
emancipation. An amendment to the Constitution is recom- 
mended, by which slavery shall be gradually, yet entirely, 
abolished in all the states and throughout the country. But 
the great import of the paper was not so much what it 
recommended — for its plan of emancipation was too heavily 
conditioned to be practically available — as the fact that the 
abolition of slavery was for the first time boldly and seri- 
ously discussed, and made the most important topic, in a 
regular Presidential message. More memorable still is the 
message for its closing words, in which the chorus of the 
drama again speaks, inspired by the genius of republican 
freedom, who thus urges her champions up to the true battle 
ground, and holds the now fast developing action close to 
its divine intent. Hear the deep, stately, measured tones, 
as they seem to come from the distant heavens : 

" The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the 
stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, 
and we must rise with the occasion. • * * We must dis- 
enthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. * * 
No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or 
another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will 

light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. 
# * * ^y e — even we k ere — ^old t } ie p 0wer an d b ear 

the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave we assure 

H 



58 



freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give and 
what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the 
last, best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this 
could not, cannot fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, 
just, — a way which, if followed, the world will forever ap- 
plaud and God must forever bless." 

But this paper coupled with its plan of gradual abolition 
the principles of compensation and voluntary colonization. 
Its proposed method of action was not so lofty as the spirit 
that inspired it. The noble goal aimed at condemned the 
halting effort. It was not for any such imperfect result that 
this mighty contest was proving the metal of the nation. 
The human instrument was not so far-sighted as the Provi- 
dence which wrought through him, — the actor not so wise 
as the manager behind the scenes. Yet he is faithful and 
true, and submits himself with unwavering loyalty to the 
teaching of events and of God : and with ever lengthening 
and bolder paces he goes forward. One after another all 
imposed conditions of emancipation drop away. Compen- 
sation, gradualism, colonization, vanish and become obsolete 
ideas ; and the champion stands, clean from all alloy of the 
evil he is to annihilate, alone with God and justice. 

In August, 1861, he had modified General Fremont's proc- 
lamation of emancipation in Missouri to conciliate Kentucky. 
In May, 1862, he had countermanded General Hunter's de- 
cree of abolition in the department of the South, only 
because he reserved the great right for himself and would 
not allow it to be frittered away powerlessly, and with little 
moral effect, by subordinates. It is evident in the very 
order of countermand that he begins to see clearly what the 
line of duty and destiny must be. He appeals to the in- 



59 



surgent states, in the words already quoted, to smooth the 
way to peaceful emancipation by voluntarily acceding to the 
logic of events and to the plain intent of divine Providence. 
Even as late as the 13th of September, he had received a 
religious deputation from the city of Chicago, appointed to 
urge him to declare emancipation by military proclamation, 
and replied to their arguments with such a strong array of 
objections to the measure that the deputation had departed 
in great doubt as to his adopting it. But it is as clear as 
noonday now, that the President had been debating the 
measure in his own mind for months, and marshalling the 
arguments for and against it, and that, in this interview, he 
summed up the difficulties in the way, as they had presented 
themselves to him, in order to draw forth, if possible, from 
the deputation, new light upon the question. He also sig- 
nificantly added at the close of the conference : "I can assure 
you the subject is on my mind, by day and night, more than 
any other. Whatever shall appear to be God's will I will 
do." And now God's will is rapidly revealed to him, — not 
through miraculous interposition, for, as he says, " these are 
not the days of miracles " ; but through an earnest desire to 
" ascertain what is possible, and learn what appears to be 
wise and right." Events are his instructors. The spirit of 
Almighty Justice, unfolding its high purpose more and more 
in the daily history of the struggle, is his teacher. He 
consults his cabinet for suggestion, not for advice. Upon 
him Heaven has put the responsibility, and he will decide 
and bear the weight of the decision alone. And the deci- 
sion being made, the duty clear, on the 22d of September, he 
issues the preliminary declaration, and gives the final warn- 



60 



ing to the rebellious states; and on the 1st of January, 
1863, appears the great Proclamation of immediate emanci- 
pation. 

The critical blow has now been struck. The deed is done 
for which all before has been only preparation : and all that 
comes after — emancipation in the border states, the enlist- 
ment of negroes in the army, the Freedmen's Bureau, the 
anti-slavery amendment to the Constitution — is only the 
gathering up of the fruits of that victory and making it 
secure forever. The issuing of the Proclamation was the 
crisis in the drama ; and so when that blow was given, the 
embattled hosts rushed to the conflict with a more furious 
and deadlier onset. It was now life or death to the foe and 
slavery, life or death to the nation and freedom. But 
through all the deathly contests on the martial field, and 

through all the struggles on the equally dangerous field of 
politics, threatened by foes and importuned by friends, the 
president never recedes from that decree. " The promise," 
he says, " being made, must be kept." " While I remain in 
my present position, I shall not attempt to retract or modify 
the Emancipation Proclamation, nor shall I return to slavery 
any person who is free by the terms of that Proclamation, 
or by any of the acts of Congress." And again, " If the 
people," he says, " by whatever mode or means, should make 
it an executive duty " to reverse the action of that procla- 
mation, " another, and not I, must be their instrument to 
perform it." Here speaks the stern stuff from which strong 
men are made and martyrs come. But the people will stand 
by the Proclamation ; nor will they choose any other hand 
than his that had written it, to execute it. Not to another 



61 

can the true champion's glory be given before the field is 
wholly won. 

And now, with clearer vision, and more entire surrender 
to the divine purpose of events, he consecrates himself to 
the remaining tasks before him. Henceforth Union and 
Freedom are synonymous. Two conditions are necessary 
to peace, — the abolition of all acts of secession, the accept- 
ance of emancipation. But hear again the lofty strains of 
the chorus, pronouncing judgment on the new aspect of 
affairs : 

" Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it 
will come soon and come to stay ; and so come as to be 
worth the keeping in all future time. It will then have been 
proved that among freemen there can be no successful ap- 
peal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take 
such appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the cost. 
And there will be some black men who can remember that 
with silent tongue, and clinched teeth, and steady eye, and 
well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this 
great consummation, while I fear there will be some white 
ones unable to forget that with malignant heart and deceitful 
speech they have striven to hinder it. Still, let us not be 
over-sanguine of a speedy, final triumph. Let us be quite 
sober. Let us diligently apply the means, never doubtino- 
that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the 
rightful result." 

And so, with ever broader comprehension of the divine 

meaning of the contest and deeper conviction of the divine 

hand controlling it, the President renews his vows, and leads 

on the loyal hosts of freedom to new achievements. Under 

God, and the providential choice of the nation, he is the 

instrument for establishing the government on the true 



62 

democratic basis of liberty, justice, and equality ; and so lor 
fulfilling, at last, the prophecy of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence to all the people of the land. 

At Gettysburg, standing among the graves of the heroes, 
who on that glorious field had given their bodies to death, 
but who, with their blood, had written their names in the 
book of immortal life, he opens his address with these 
memorable sentences : " Four score and seven years ago 
our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, 
conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that 
all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great 
civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so 
conceived and so dedicated, can long endure." And then he 
solemnly consecrates himself and the nation to finish the 
work which the heroes there buried had so nobly died for, 
in order " that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth 
of freedom, and that government of the people, by the 
people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth." 

What a perfect recognition of the eternal principles in- 
volved in the conflict, and of the Providence watching over 
and directing with far reaching vision the struggle, does this 
reverent dedication disclose ! Henceforth the nation's Presi- 
dent is God's servant; and the war is a religious war, — a 
religious war more really than if it were to set up some 
idol of theology, or to enthrone some ecclesiastic power, or 
to rescue the tomb of Jesus from the hand of unbe- 
lieving Saracens : for it is a war to disenthrall and redeem 
humanity ; to rescue a whole continent from being the grave 
of liberty to become its throne ; to lift from the shoulders 
of a whole people, through the expiatory suffering of just 



63 

retribution, the monstrous burden of a gigantic iniquity ; and 
to bring, through the reconciliation of obedience to divine 
law, the grandest opportunity for national and individual 
development that was ever offered to the human race : it is 
a war, conducted by unseen powers in the heavens, for the 
divine right of mankind, without reference to race or class 
or color, to self-government and self-development, — and the 
President acknowledges himself but a willing instrument in 
the hands of the mighty celestial forces directing the com- 
bat. Hear hpw the lips of the loyal leader give utterance 
to the sentiment of this advanced position : " Now, at the 
end of three years' struggle, the nation's condition is not 
what either party, or any man, devised or expected. God 
alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If 
God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also 
that we of the North, as well as you of the South, shall pay 
fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history 
will find therein new causes to attest and revere the justice 
and goodness of God." 

From this high position it is but a step to the final con- 
summation of the moral progress of the drama. After a 
political struggle, filled with critical and perilous incidents, 
and the most solemnly momentous of any that has occurred 
in our history, the people rechoose for their leader the man 
who now confesses himself to be, not only the servant of 
the people, but the servant of God,- and they choose him 
with the express purpose that he may finish the work for 
republican freedom which the retributive justice of Almighty 
God has given to his hands. And now the recognition of 
this truth of the expiatory nature of the war, and the divine 



64 



instrumentality of his office culminates in the majestic, almost 
awful solemnity of the second Inaugural Address, — which 
rises clear above all earthly taint, and human infirmity and 
reservation, to the prophetic and divine stand-point. The 
political orator is clothed with the mantle of the inspired 
prophet ; the wise statesman utters his counsels as from the 
tribunal of heaven ; the leader of the nation becomes the 
oracle of divine laws and judgments. From the mouth of 
what other human magistrate in all history, shall we find 
such utterances as these ? 

" The Almighty has his own purposes. ' Woe came into 
the world because of offences, for it must needs be that 
offences come, but woe to that man by whom the offence 
cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one 
of these offences, which in the providence of God must needs 
come, but which, having continued through his appointed 
time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both 
North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those 
by whom the offence came, shall we discern that there is any 
departure from those divine attributes which the believers 
in a living God always ascribe to him ? Fondly do we 
hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war 
may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue 
until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred 
and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until 
every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by 
another drawn with the sword, — as was said three thousand 
years ago, so still it must be said, that, the 'judgments of the 
Lord are true and righteous altogether.' With malice 
toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, 
as God gives U3 to see the right, let us strive on to finish 
the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care 
for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow 



65 

and his orphans, — to do all which may achieve and cherish a 
just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." 

In these words the highest possible utterance of the strug- 
gle is reached : the moral triumph of the drama is here 
achieved ; the eternal majesty of the divine laws is acknowl- 
edged and vindicated ; and the hero stands perfectly sub- 
missive to the divine purpose, — docile to the slightest behest 
of Almighty power, and his eye anointed with heavenly 
wisdom. These sentences read like a solemn choral response 
to the half-illuminated, oracularly uttered judgment of the 
first Inaugural : it is the genius of the Republic, gathering 
up, as in the ancient chorus, the whole meaning and purpose 
of the drama, and echoing back, through all the vast, inter- 
vening events of the action, the august announcement, that 
the mystery is unravelled, the struggle ended, the judgment 
finished and unalterably given. Battles, victories, capitula- 
tions, the surrender of armies and towns, the submission of 
the whole rebellion to the cause that is thus decided for by 
the celestial umpires, follow in rapid and natural course. 

But is the hero to have no more visible triumph than this ? 
Yes ; he enters the fallen capital of rebellion and slavery. 
His entrance into Richmond, with no imperial pomp, with no 
military escort even, attended only by a few sailors from 
the navy — emblem of republican Executive simplicity; walk- 
ing up the long, desolate streets of the captured city, in plain 
citizen's dress, holding his little boy by the hand— emblem 
of republican domestic simplicity ; followed by a growing 
throng, as the news ran from street to .street, of men, 
women, and children, from whose limbs his hands had broken 
the shackles of slavery, — their skin black, but hearts white 



\ 



66 



with joyous gratitude, as they crowded round to hail their 
deliverer, — baring their heads in reverence before him, and 
he with instinctive courtesy standing with uncovered head 
in response — emblem of democratic liberty and equality ; — 
this journey is his triumphal procession; this throng of 
emancipated slaves, his imperial escort; the benedictions 
of these new-made freemen are his crown, — the crown of 
democratic sovereignty. 

There is now but one remaining glory that can be accorded. 
The strict laws of tragedy require that the hero shall die 
for the truth he has lived for — shall fall in the hour of 
triumph. And so the President must fall. Does Providence 
therefore direct the assassin's blow ? By no means : only 
as the providential laws surround, limit, and penetrate every 
contest between good and evil. But the deadly blow is 
aimed by the hand of the foe. It is the last, desperate, 
maddened effort of the struggling combatant. It is the 
crowning wickedness of the rebellion and slavery. The 
evil principle of the drama must culminate as well as the 
good, — it must develop all its inherent and hidden horrors 
of evil ; it must leave no seed of crime that belongs to 
itself unfruitful ; it must leave not the smallest vestige of 
honor attached to its name. And so, filled with revenge, 
mad with defeat, inspired with demoniac frenzy, it puts forth 
all the remaining energy of its mortal strength to slay the 
man whom it recognizes as the incarnation of all the princi- 
ples that have contended against it, and the leader of the 
hosts that have defeated it in battle. It slays him ; and 
thereby, according to the moral intent of the drama, brands 
itself with everlasting infamy, while it lifts him to an immor- 



67 



tal glory, and saves forever the truth to which his life was 
devoted. The assassin's crime is the rebellion's infamy, and 
his and freedom's apotheosis. The President falls. But over 
his grave the nation has a new birth — a resurrection. He 
seals his testament with his blood, and sanctifies republican 
truth forever. The President falls. But over his grave his 
spirit rises into the renowned halls of the celestial heroes, 
welcomed amid the triumphant songs of a nation redeemed, 
a people emancipated, a country saved. 

With the hero's triumphant departure from earth the 
drama is ended ; but the Spirit of the drama lingers, and 
utters an epilogue for the awe-struck, listening spectators ; 
and this is the epilogue it speaks : 

The President falls: for "where a testament is, there 
must also of necessity be the death of the testator." The 
President falls. But his testament remains with us : for a 
testament is of force after men are dead." The testament 
remains. The nation, humanity, the world, are its legatees ; 
but we, the people of this generation, are its executors: 
and we have given sacred bonds, written and attested on 
many a battle-field with our kindred's blood, that we will 
administer it, — administer it with exact and impartial jus- 
tice to all classes and castes and races among us, — in order 
" that government of the people, by the people, and for the 
people, shall not perish from the earth." 

June i, 1865. 



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